


Cast the dice

by boxofwonder



Category: Fire Emblem: If | Fire Emblem: Fates
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-03
Updated: 2017-03-03
Packaged: 2018-09-28 00:09:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,519
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10058309
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/boxofwonder/pseuds/boxofwonder
Summary: Corrin wakes, at the very beginning. Hardened by a war and spoiled by a home built with love and compassion and endless, endless sacrifice.Corrin wakes, and it has all vanished, leaving him to build the same future. Or perhaps, a better one.But everything changes, and he can not even begin to anticipate what will happen when he casts the dice again.





	

**Author's Note:**

> I lost my entire save file today and this is how I cope. Hello fire emblem fandom. I'm gonna have to do the map where you had to hold your ground for like 11 rounds again and if I'm gonna have to repeat _that_ I might as well do so with an angsty fic to spice it up as I go. _(Again.)_

“Niles -”

He struggled against the hands holding him down. “No, please, no -”

“My lord.” Felicia. That was Felicia’s voice. Corrin blearily blinked his eyes, the world around him focusing. Slowly. This was … his room … back at his father’s castle … ? Above him, Felicia, around him, his siblings …

“You had a dream.”

“Niles -” The word was off Corrin’s tongue again, his husband’s face the last thing he remembered. Niles dozing, and Corrin trailing the curve of his sleepy smile before he could feel it broaden beneath his touch, Niles blinking up at him. His rough, sleep-worn voice asking for a better way to wake him, and their slow, lazy kiss.

Corrin had stepped out of their treehouse, and -

“Niles,” he repeated, like that prayer might bring him back to that sun-filled room with his dozing husband, not the dark walls all around. Oppressive. He had found this homey when he had needed to, grew up here, knew nothing beyond this walls.

After knowing a true home, his castle, his friends, his alleys, his husband -

It was unbearable. He had lived and fought a war, was in the middle of it, had been forced to make decisions ending in bloodshed. Sacrificed too much, too much and there was still so much to sacrifice, blood to be shed, before this country could truly be at peace. What was happening? Why was he here?

“Wha -”

Felicia stumbled over her feet hurrying away, and Elise pushed onward, her bright eyes wide with fear and … she looked …

She was as round-faced as ever, as puffy-eyed, as bright and bouncy. Too much so. Her cheeks were too round, her eyes too unknowing. This wasn’t the Elise he had left this morning. This was -

“Corrin?” she asked, terrified. “Do you have a fever? I’ll heal you.”

“Maybe he just needs a big hug from his big sister,” Camilla chimed in.

A Camilla who didn’t have that scar across her cheek, from a too-close call with a jagged enemy sword that had done things to her face not even Elise could mend without scarring. She’d come away with her life, and Rowan and her had sat watching the sunrise the day after. So intimate with the loom of death, and yet, unused to coming so close to its embrace. They’d sat side by side together, in silence. Equals, Camilla able to relax around him rather than smother him, rather than feeling he’d slip away the second she let go of her iron grip.

Some horrible realisation hit Corrin even though he still hoped, prayed, desperately clinging to the fact that he was dreaming. That Niles would wake him.

But he did not wake. Not as the chaos ebbed down, as a day played out that had happened so long ago, in another life, a simpler life. A more naive one. Before Corrin had began shouldering the same burden his siblings had, their whole lives. Trying so desperately to be good when the system demanded they’d be cruel, or dead.

He prayed to wake, but he didn’t.

So Corrin smiled, doing his best to get them all off his back. To get some quiet, so he could recover. Gather his thoughts. Allow his hands to shake and his disbelieving tears to fall to ease the pressure on his chest. He felt like he was choking and it wasn’t stopping. None of this was ending. Niles hadn’t woken him, and neither had any of his siblings. The siblings he had fought alongside, had gotten to know so much better than he ever had before, when he had been a spoiled child robbed from his kingdom and hauled up in this room.

Before he had become the one who had chosen to fight for Nohr, to bring peace to both Nohr and Hoshido. The person who had done whatever it took, even when his guilt became heavier by the day, and only urged him onwards. To make it all worth it, to finally see peace rule instead of bloodshed.

Corrin was about ready to collapse when, at last, everyone had filed out. He closed the door, unable to press it into its hinges, and surrendered knowing there was no point. Leo slipped back into his room, closing the door behind him.

His calm facade did not fool Corrin. His eyes couldn’t conceal the storm hidden inside them any longer - not after Corrin had stopped being so _blind_ to everything around him. “Leo,” he said. Defeated. He stumbled backwards, falling down onto the edge of his bed. Too wide, too empty, too cold. Did not bother to keep up the smiling pretense.

“Why did you start from a fever with the name of my retainer on your lips?”

Corrin did not answer. He did not even know how he could, without lying.

“You have barely exchanged a few polite words. And yet you whispered his name, feverish, like a lifeline.”

“So I did.” Leo did not even know how true his words were. Corrin wanted to curl into a ball and sob like a child, only he did not have that luxury anymore. And even if, no arms would be there to hold him.

_You have barely exchanged a few polite words._

Niles. His Niles. All their memories, gone. Having each others backs in battle, the banter and stolen kisses. And the thoughtless ones, not caring anymore, heated by a battle almost lost. Those kisses that had tasted like being _alive_ and the quieter ones tasting like _home._ All of it, gone. Every single memory. Every decision. Every scar from this day on.

Gone.

“There are several things I know without a doubt,” Leo began, his voice rational. The same tone he took in a war council. If Corrin closed his eyes, he could forget about the terror - lose himself to the soothing familiarity of his brother’s intellect. “A feverish man is incapable of lying. And so are you, period.”

Corrin couldn’t meet his eyes.

“And I trust Niles. He would not have done anything to you. You did not sound … panicked. Not afraid _of_ him. But … for him. Am I correct?”

“Yes.” That was easy. That wasn’t even a question.

“And yet, he has not spoken to me about anything that would … warrant your fear for him. In fact, I went to check up on him, and he was confused when I asked about your relationship to him.”

“Please -” Corrin did not know what he was pleading for. He couldn’t take any more of this. It was salt in wounds so fresh he had barely been able to acknowledge their existence.

“Corrin.” Leo sat down on the bed beside him, awkward and stiff for a second, before he wrapped an arm around his shoulder and pulled him close. "What is going on?"

And Corrin broke like he had promised he wouldn’t any more. But that was before he had lost all the glue holding him together. Before he had been tossed into a life that wasn’t broken, when _he_ was still a broken thing. Shattered, patched.

“He is my husband.” His words were thick with his tears, but he forced them all out, voice contorted with hiccups. “Was? We fought together - lost - won - everyone - Leo, it’s all gone -”

“Calm down. Corrin, breathe.”

Leo wouldn’t believe him. There was no way to.

That was what he would have thought if he was still the man who had lived through this the first time. Corrin pulled back, pulling himself together. Scrubbed at his eyes and met Leo’s gaze. Spoke even when his voice trembled. “I lived all this, brother. Father will send me two prisoners to execute as a lesson. And you will pretend to slay them, when truly, you are saving them. As you have done all these years when I have been blind. Trying to do as much good as possible, under the guise of being a perfect prince of Nohr. So father would not kill you, as he longs to kill me.” Corrin looked down at his hands. He lacked scars, there, too. “But you, my siblings, will save me. Will fight this war alongside me. So we can bring peace. That is the truth. I know it sounds crazy but -”

Leo only stared at him, but not like Corrin was crazy. His look was that of a chess player realising the board had more than the one layer he had been playing, calculating, counting on.

“Is that so,” he repeated, voice flat. Corrin knew not to push him, so he nodded, slowly.

Leo exhaled, tension in his shoulders barely easing. His jaw working. “What can I do?”

“What?”

“To help you, Corrin. What can I do?”

Leo believing him was the one thing that actually made it easier for Corrin to breathe again. “Save Rinkah and Kaze again. Please.” Corrin scrubbed his hands over his face. He was so tired, and in such desperate need of Niles whispering about the future to him. “Stay true to your heart as you always have.” That was the easy part. Leo would never stray from that. “And … please. Keep Niles away from me.”

**Author's Note:**

> I just got Soleil today. Life is cruel. Stay safe, kids. Don't overwrite your safe files accidentally when you start a second run so you can marry Leo and call Forrest your child. You'll have to rebuild everything _and_ start a fic. And the latter is the beginning of the end.


End file.
